Fred
Written by LyingUncle. {A warning to those rushing towards the keyboard to correct the spelling of "Flintstones": for the purpose of the story I've opted to use the contextual spelling of "Flinstone".} If you've ever been a substantial fan of The Pixies, you should remember a song from the 1989 release Doolittle entitled "Crackity Jones". For those who aren't hip on the band, the song is roughly about the lead singer rooming with a Puerto Rican sufferer of schizophrenia obsessed with Fred Flintstone, or "Paco Picopiedra". For the sake of exploiting the connection to my similar experience, I'm going to call a similar friend from a few years back "Mr. Jones". Jones had delusions. Really bad. He'd try to fight them by facing the demons head on. A camping chair in his substantial backyard was his front row seat to the suffering blackness of the empty country night. Empty? To us maybe, but even the most secular folk among us who eschew superstition let their imaginations rush, galloping trails of hellfire. This "empty" void of Jones' backyard view was populated by a sole totem of insanity. He didn't see a "hyper-realistic" cartoon character. He saw a small man in the classic orange garb making a slow shuffle towards him. The type of unnatural walk that covers 10 feet of distance in 40 steps. "FLINSTONE!", he cried out. It was a night I happened to be sharing a few brews with Mr. Jones. He'd set out some cardboard cutouts of inhuman shapes, all reading "FLINSTONE". He points at the hallucination in readied terror, "You know I'm not fucking around this time. You can see it. Two of them meet and-", he pauses to steady one of the flinstones that's becoming too fond of a gentle breeze that had eerily materialized. "Two of them meet...", he continued "and they reverse, reverse directions, reverse directions and walk the opposite way." I had really nothing to say. I clumsily stammered, "Uh... are you sure there's.... um... a flinstone coming?" "SHH...", Mr. Jones held a pale, trembling hand up, keeping a sharpshooter focus on the darkness ahead. Without even slightly telegraphing his next movement, he let out the scream of a newborn. The scream of a rabbit that's figured out you're trying to kill it, making a sick facsimile of a human infant's cries of distress. He screamed that awful scream and rushed into the house, locking the door and killing the lights behind him. At this moment I'm still in a buzzed shock. "Is he gonna hurt himself? God, I hope he doesn't dial the police, I forgot about the weed. Ugh, god damn it..." I trip over to the door and start firmly rapping. "OPEN UP! Come on, man. There's no one out here." "..." "Seriously, my jacket's inside. At least slip that through the dog door because I have to go home." "..." Now, I didn't realize it, or process it at the time, but I swear I heard a noise from behind me. My back was turned to the window of Jones' personal hell. The Flinstone Hell. I decided to get my jacket later. Jones had acted up like this before and never showed any sign of self-harm. The worst that could happen is he'd get better at making cardboard cutouts to keep the Bedrock Boogieman away. I drove back, following the winding dirt road back to my house located closer to town. I don't remember my first reaction when his sister phoned me with the news. Mr. Jones was found hanging from a tree a short walk from his back porch. In direct eye line of his camping chair. His cardboard Flinstones. A man driven to permanent silence by his own tormented mind. I'm not sure what compelled me to ask for that stupid cheap jacket back, but I wanted to make sure his sister was okay. She was at Jones' house packing some of his stray belongings anyway. I was still in the driveway as she came out, obviously emotionally drained. "My mother's coming to pick up some of this stuff pretty soon, I'm sorry I can't talk longer!" she said, hastily handing me a plastic bag. "I put your phone in there too, I hope it isn't broken!" "Thank you so much. I guess I'll leave you to it. Make sure you give me a call if you need anything at all." She thanked me and I pulled out, giving a friendly wave. "Phone?", I checked my pocket. I had my phone on me. Reaching into the bag, I felt the hard smooth surface of an unfamiliar smartphone. Must be a mistake. Jones' maintained a steady diet of conspiracy theories and was definitely not the type of man to carry a tracking device around. At the birdshot acned stop sign leading to my house I made one of the gravest mistakes of my life. I picked up the phone. "I DO n T LIE" was scribbled in barely legible metal scratch, a small arrow gouged deep into the screen pointing at his camera icon. I waited until I wasn't a danger to traffic and was safely in my driveway before I started scrolling through the images. There were dozens and dozens of photographs of the exact same backyard view. The type of obsessive catalog of someone with a biting mental illness. A mental illness that robbed me of a friend. The only differences were mild lighting changes and a linear growth in the amount of cardboard cutouts. That's until I reached the last picture. I swear on my mother's eternal soul I almost threw up. Like a sick orange stain in the black, there stood a filthy, toothless, man in a Fred Flintstone tunic. Holding my jacket in his gums. Category:CreepyPasta Article